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User blog:Rayolinels/Nintendo Switch preview event impressions
Earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to receive an invite from Nintendo via my Nintendo Account email to attend the Nintendo Switch Preview Tour event in San Francisco. I signed up for the session on Saturday, February 25th from 2:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon. I have separated my impressions below into sections for the hardware of the Switch itself, its accessories, and its features; sections for some of the game demos I experienced; and sections on how the event worked. Please enjoy. Hardware The Joy-Con and Switch Pro Controller The Joy-Con are small and have clicky buttons, and the Joy-Con Strap attachment makes them more comfortable to hold vertically. However, it can be a little awkward to hold a Joy-Con horizontally if your wrist is through the strap. The SL and SR buttons on the Joy-Con are not too easy to click, but are functional. The Joy-Con motion controls are accurate, such as in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, so that's good. The control sticks have a quite small travel distance and the Joy-Con buttons overall are quite small. Maybe even smaller than the 3DS, but I'm not sure. Probably around the same size. This does allow the Joy-Con to be portable. They fit alright in my hands. I will say, the Joy-Con Grip makes it easier to hold the controllers, though not that much easier. For Breath of the Wild, for instance, I would much rather play with either the Wii U GamePad or the Switch Pro Controller. (I have never tried the Wii U Pro Controller, so maybe that is good too.) The Switch Pro controller has a nice weight, large buttons that are more on the soft side than clicky, and easy-to-reach sticks with a good travel distance between the sticks and buttons. It feels good to hold. Splatoon 2 made great use of the motion controls on this thing, which acts just as you would expect from the Wii, Wii U, or 3DS's motion controls. Buying additional controllers for the Switch is fairly expensive, as you likely know. I think that the Pro Controller had a good feel to it and is probably worth the price. On the other hand, Joy-Con pairs let you split them up, but are pretty uncomfortable when held sideways. Especially SL and SR, even when the strap is attached, they are just not very ergonomic. I get that they are portable, but the SL and SR buttons are just lumps, which are not super easy to rest your fingers on comfortably. Rumble I was not super impressed by any of the rumble features in any of the games I played. First off, when the Joy-Con are in the Grip, you get a reduced rumble experience, from my experience. When I was playing Zelda, I tried a little with holding the Joy-Con separately, and it was easier to feel the regular rumble this way. For games that used HD Rumble, like ARMS, I couldn't feel much of a difference. Maybe it is the weird way that ARMS has you hold the Joy-Con, or the fact that it was the first game I played at the event, but I didn't feel the whole "sensation of the arms rocketing out" that has been described by some of Nintendo's people when demoing the system. Similarly, in Sonic Mania and FAST RMX, where I had heard the HD rumble is noticeable, I didn't feel anything particularly special. Now, again, it could have been the crowed environment which distracted me from feeling the rumble, but.... it isn't super strong, is all. Also, I unfortunately was not able to demo 1-2-Switch, so I may have missed out on the best demonstration of HD Rumble's capabilities. Switching Switching between the handheld and TV mode was easy, just press the release buttons and lift the Joy-Con off of the device or Grip. The Joy-Con Grip was a little small, but I think I would be able to get used to it. The removing of the Joy-Con controllers is easy to do with the little buttons on the back. The game switches instantly. Once you switch in or out of the Dock, the controllers are asked to be reconfirmed by pressing L and R and you're off. This will allow you to, for instance, switch to using the Pro Controller with the console right when it is docked, without having to manually pull up another menu (assuming the game supports the Pro Controller). Also, sliding the Switch into and out of the Dock was very smooth. I didn't find any issues with centering the Switch into the Dock. It is nice and easy to lift out once you have snapped in the Joy-Con onto the side. (And that snap sound is so satisfying, even in person!) Tabletop Mode and Handheld Mode When I was trying out tabletop mode I had the opportunity to get a good look at the screen on the Switch itself. The Switch has a nice viewing angle range for the screen for maintaining color accuracy. The 720p resolution is also very sufficient, and quite improved over the Wii U GamePad. I did not get a chance to try out the touchscreen capabilities. I was able to try out, overall, Snipperclips, Breath of the Wild, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch screen. The motion controls worked well in handheld mode for aiming in Breath of the Wild. All the controllers have player LEDs like Wii Remotes or Wii U Pro Controllers do. Very straightforward, you can connect up to 8 combined controllers at once, in any mode. Probably only want to do that in TV mode, because the screen is not big enough in portable mode to have more than 2 people at once, honestly. Even looking over a person's shoulder is probably best left to only one person. Games ''Splatoon 2'' Splatoon 2 has a nice set of new specials, but in general feels very similar to its predecessor. Not necessarily a bad thing. The motion controls in the Pro Controller are good, but it is a shame that you have to pull up the map by pressing X rather than having it always accessible on the GamePad screen. I think it will be a pretty successful game, and it's good that there will finally be voice chat. Naturally, this game will require the new Switch online subscription to play online. I tried playing with the Splat Charger and the Dualies. The Splat Charger now lets you save your charged shot when you turn into squid form, a nice adjustment. I really didn't notice too much different in the Dualies' gameplay than with any other regular shooter in Splatoon, but it looks cool, I guess? Anyhow. ''Breath of the Wild'' Breath of the Wild had a line and ticket system but I was able to get in by waiting because some people did not show up with their tickets. The game has a nice atmosphere, only detracted from by the bustle in the room around me. Thankfully, there were headphones; this was the only game station that had these. I was playing on the Great Plateau, the same demo area as in the demo at E3 last June. I won't share any more details than that here in case anyone reading is avoiding information on the game, apart from saying that it controls nicely and has a good button layout for managing your inventory on the fly (since there's no second screen for that purpose). ''ARMS'' I had some trouble adapting to the controls at first, since the Joy-Con are held in a unique grip for this game. However, as I continued playing, I think I became more adapted to using the motion controls, which are very responsive and sensitive. You simply tilt or push the controllers in the direction you want for movement and punching, while maneuvers like jumping and activating your power move are delegated to the shoulder buttons, which you operate with your thumbs. The game is intriguing, and I can see there being a pretty high skill ceiling here; I'll be interested in seeing how others react to this game when it comes out. ''Snipperclips'' Snipperclips requires true teamwork with each player cutting out the other's character into specific shapes to solve puzzles, so I see this being very good game for friends. There is also a one-player mode apparently, but I think the multiplayer will be the real draw for this one. It's nice to know that Snipperclips will be coming out at launch, too, thought I anticipate that most people will be playing Zelda come March 3rd. ''Super Bomberman R'' Super Bomberman R was straightforward control-wise and gameplay-wise. I would like to note that I have never played a Bomberman game before, so I can't compare it to any previous entries in the series. Trying to roam around and plant bombs seems alright as a gameplay concept, I suppose. I appreciated how the game lets people who are defeated by being blown up by their bombs to survive in little cart things on the edges and still participate. A bit like in Mario Kart where you become a ghost in Battle Mode. The Event The Promotional Folk The people were generally good and friendly at the event. The guy who helped me with Splatoon 2 was talking about the Dualies and stuff like that, and the woman who played Snipperclips with me was doing a good job of helping with the puzzles without spoiling them, in my opinion. Most of the people working the booths seemed to just be presenters, though apparently a handful of them were from Nintendo. The all had matching Switch shirts, as you probably know if you've seen pictures of these events. A couple of them were like "I don't really play games, heh," which is fine. The Event Room There was a big stage with a guy (or multiple people, maybe; I wasn't paying too much attention to this part) where they showed demos and brought up people to play various games. They had some commentary for some of them too. The overall ambiance had loud music that was a bit distracting, and they played the Switch trailer from October a couple of times on the big screen, too, I think. The space where they were presenting all of these demos was nicely set up, with a big red walkway down the center and smaller stations directly to the side of that. On the edges of the room were more elaborate setups for the big games, which were: Splatoon 2, where there was an on-TV match and a handheld mode match always going on; ARMS, which had multiple stations with plenty of space for people to stand up and flail around; Breath of the Wild, which was fenced off into its own themed area; and Snipperclips, which had people playing in tabletop mode around a big table. Various Switch configurations were in display cases around the front of the room, where there was also Mario Kart 8 Deluxe demonstrating tabletop mode (on an "airplane"), TV mode, handheld mode (in the "diner"), and multi-system multiplayer. There were also 1-2-Switch booths at the back of the room. Concluding Thoughts Coming away from this event, I really can tell Nintendo was trying to communicate that the Switch is quite a versatile device. And it is. There are some shortcomings to the modes, such as the SL and SR buttons while holding a Joy-Con horizontally or the rumble being perhaps slightly less impactful when using the Joy-Con Grip, but switching between modes is very easy. The games showed off were all neat, Breath of the Wild being the highlight of my day, of course. But I enjoyed my time with the other games on show, as well. The overall feel of the Nintendo Switch and accessories is premium and a pair of Joy-Con controllers and the Pro Controller each include motion, the same button layouts, and the same rumble, so I think many games will support both, which is great. It's a well-implemented concept with some great games the first few months. With only a few more days to the release of the system and a few more months for some of these games, this is an exciting time to be a Nintendo fan. With thanks to Nintendo for putting on this event and sending out an invite to a regular ole person like me. Category:Blog posts